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A Year of Jewish Ethics #10: Teshuvah

One of the most fundamental Jewish ethical practices is teshuvah. Teshuvah is the word that’s often translated as “repentance” and is too often just associated in people’s minds with the season of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Yamim Nora’im or Days of Awe. The word teshuvah has a broader meaning of “going back” or maybe “going back over”, and it is in fact a fundamental discipline in Judaism for every time of year. In Rabbi Moses Maimonides’ code of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah, teshuvah is taught not in the holy day section but in the section on the fundamentals of Torah.

Maimonides defines the paradigm of teshuvah as finding oneself in a situation where one previously acted wrongly or made the wrong choice, and this time doing it differently. Maimonides notes that there are various ways to avoid doing wrong, including just not thinking of it the next time, or not having the power or capacity to do the same wrong this time around. So for Maimonides, the ideal teshuvah is when you come to a situation again, with awareness of exactly what you did wrong and the reality that it was wrong, and with all the same capacities and thoughts that you brought to the earlier time available to you this current time. But this time, out of free will you override any situational or internal factors and take a different action.

Usually we are not in the exact same situation – with the exact same person we mistreated a certain way, in the same locale or setting. Generally teshuvah opportunities are by analogy, when the situation reminds us of something we did before. Teshuvah is a discipline of noticing those parallels, those analogies and resonances, and going back. We’re supposed to go back in memory so we can name the act, the type of situation, the thoughts or motivations behind our choice before that we want to reverse. Then an act of teshuvah is not just a bad act avoided this time, but a change within, overcoming a prior thing or a prior pattern in a way that is more likely to endure.

The figure in the book of Bereshit or Genesis who most exemplifies teshuvah is Yehudah, the fourth of the twelve sons of Yaakov. Yehudah plays a key role in throwing their young brother Yosef into a pit to get him out of their lives, and then making it look to their father as though Yosef had been killed by a beast. Yehudah sees his father himself torn apart in mourning and doesn’t do anything to show the truth, much less own up to the act. Some years later, during the famine, Yehudah and most of his remaining brothers go down to Egypt to buy food. They meet with an official there, who they don’t realize is actually Yosef himself – in any case, the Egyptian sends them off with food but insists on holding captive one brother, Shimon, and says that the brothers cannot come again for food without bringing along their youngest brother Binyamin.

They go home to Yaakov in the land of C’naan, and eventually their purchased food runs out. The only option is to go back to Egypt, and the only way they can do that is with Binyamin. Yaakov initially refuses, reminding his sons of his ongoing grief over Yosef. Standing in this situation once again, seeing his father still inconsolable, Yehudah has a moment of teshuvah. He tells Yaakov that he personally will guarantee Binyamin’s safety, exactly what he did not do when the brothers wanted to harm Yosef. This guarantee is the only thing that convinces Yaakov to let them take Binyamin.

Then in Egypt, when the official offers to release all of the brothers to return home well provisioned if they leave Binyamin behind – Yehudah steps forward and tells this (apparent) Egyptian stranger a version of the story of their family. He mentions his father and his father’s losses and grief; he mentions that there is a brother not with them. It’s not the whole story. But faced with a similar choice as at the pit and after, Yehudah goes back to the moment when Yosef was left behind and the aftermath. He states his refusal to do those things again, to another brother and to his father.

The book of Bereshit (Genesis) is not a manual of ethics; there are plenty of actions by our founding ancestors that look wrong or are wrong, even in the eyes of our tradition. And in fact as we will see, it will take the Exodus story to finish the foundations of Jewish ethics. But if we look at the Torah from the standpoint of ethics, it is the development of Yehudah that is the culmination of the book of Genesis, the defining part of the generation that will complete the book. Yehudah’s change may not meet every criterion of Maimonides for complete teshuvah. But it’s also a reminder of how much we can do by approaching that ideal. Yehudah’s teshuvah is described in the Torah through a series of moments. That’s what teshuvah is, an ongoing spiritual, ethical discipline, and it's one of the gifts of the many final chapters of the book of Bereshit. It is one of the reasons that we, the Jews, are named after Yehudah (Judah) -- the Judah-ites, the Jews, the people who do teshuvah.

For a completely different type of deep dive on teshuvah, check out Tov! A Podcast About "The Good Place" and Jewish Ideas -- here on the web, or search for Tov! on any podcast app.

Parashat Vayeshev: Tim Tebow, Meet Yosef

Here was the thing about Yosef:  No matter what, God was with him, and he prospered.

Yosef was left by his brothers, and brought to Egypt and sold.  As soon as he arrived in the house of Potiphar, an official of the Pharaoh, "Adonai was with Yosef, and he became a prosperous person, and so he was in the house of his Egyptian master" (Genesis 39:2).  Then, when Potiphar's wife accused him of sexual wrongdoing, and he ended up imprisoned, "whatever he did, Adonai made it prosper" (39:23).

I thought of this aspect of Yosef this week, in the context of something that seems fairly insignificant.  Tim Tebow is a professional football player, quarterback of the Denver Broncos.  Since his days as a college quarterback at the University of Florida, he has been known as a devout and religious person.  He gained some national notice in 2010 during the Super Bowl, when he was in a commercial with his mother about her decision not to have an abortion when she was pregnant with Tim.

In the football world, Tebow is regarded as an unusual quarterback who may well not last.  But this season he took over the leadership of his team, and has led them week after week to, dare I say, "miraculous" comeback victories.  When he scores, his end-zone ritual of bowing in thanks has become known as "Tebowing", a new minitrend.  (At teebowing.com, a fan site, there are pictures of people doing this all over the world, including the Kotel in Jerusalem.)

Essentially, Tim Tebow is inviting us to see him like Yosef:  whatever he does on the field, God is causing him to succeed.  (What other explanation could there be, since football experts don't buy into his skills?)  The sports radio programs, especially the last two weeks, are now full of debate about whether his overt displays of religiosity are appropriate, over-the-top, offensive, a turn-off to fans, etc.

Now this is football, and just to be clear, there are other places that need the divine spirit much more than the end zone.  But these kinds of cultural discussions do hold a mirror up, and it's worth checking on what we see.

So first I'll say that, as a religious person, I see something of a double standard.  We tend to expect a certain amount of bad behavior from professional athletes, and a good deal of childishness, offensive behavior toward women, and barroom brawling is overlooked.  Or, explained away as part of the scene, "where they come from", or what not.  Though to be fair, I think the expectations on athletes are rising, and the storm after Penn State is a good indication of that.

But a lot of people are simply ridiculing Tim Tebow because he is religious, in an open and enthusiastic way.  Say what you will (I will say what I will just below) -- Tebow's ethic is a positive influence on his team and community.  People praise him as a super teammate, and an inspiring leader.  For him that flows from his faith, and why shouldn't it?  Athletics is a discipline, and his faith feeds into his excellence.  He's not harming anyone, he's lifting people up.  That's some of the best of faith.  If people are uncomfortable with that, let them be as uncomfortable about greed in sports generally.  It's still acceptable in America to condescend to religious people, especially to evangelical Christians.  Not only to worry about having them impose their religious, but to degrade them as cute or quaint or from another era.  That simply shouldn't be.

Still, Tim Tebow is not Yosef.  The big differences are these.  First, the Torah tells us that God prospered Yosef not when Yosef was on top, but when he was on the bottom.  When he was a slave, a prisoner -- not a superstar.  Second, the Torah tells us what other people saw in him, or what was obvious about him from an outside perspective.  You don't see Yosef calling attention to himself in Egypt as blessed by God.  He had done that in the past, when he was little, bragging to his brothers about his dreams of being in God's favor.  But he grew up.

Yosef came to experience God's blessing, and to become a channel for prosperity.  But he was probably the same age as Tim Tebow when Yosef learned not to flaunt it.  God didn't need Yosef to spell it out for other people.  It was enough for him to live it.  There was, or would be, a reason for Yosef to bear that kind of blessing.  It wasn't football; it was family, and to save his people.

Hopefully if Tim Tebow stick around, he'll grow into this as Yosef did.  For his own growth and sense of perspective, and for the good name of religion in America.